In this week's article of The Scrying Pool, we look at the very mysterious Deep Sea Dragon.

There is not much that we know about the Deep Sea Dragon, or Bubbles as the community has come to call him. We learned about this dragon from the Movement or the World article released by ArenaNetback in 2007: “In the deepest waters of the sea, another dragon breathed, twisting the waters themselves into tentacled horrors that rose from every lake and river of the land.”

There have been a few hints in-game about something in the deep reaches of the ocean, but never mentioned in relation to a dragon. It doesn't even appear the races believe there is another dragon in the deeps of the sea. No one that would know of such a dragon is very talkative. The Largos is a race that lives in the deep parts of the ocean but only speak of horrors that the player is not yet ready to face. The Krait have pushed the Quaggan inland supposedly due the dragon's influence, but the Krait themselves aren't much for sharing. In fact what little we know of the Krait points to them in the process of expanding their territory not fleeing from a foe they cannot defeat.

It is due to these two races from the Unending Ocean that we believe that the Deep Sea Dragon lives there. But the other dragons we do know of have a far reaching grip. Zhaitan has sent undead minions to just about anywhere he can sail them. Primordius is currently in the Maguuma Wastelands but has minions popping up almost across the current map in Mount Maelstrom. So if the Deep Sea Dragon is indeed pushing these races out of the Unending Ocean, it doesn't necessarily mean the dragon itself is there. The only dragon that we know that has gotten its hands dirty is Jormag and he lost a tooth because of it.

So what if the Deep Sea Dragon isn't in the Unending Ocean? What if this entire time we have been considering the deep sea to mean the ocean when it could have been a more straightforward use of the word sea? Is there a place somewhere is Guild Wars called a sea that is large and deep enough to hide an Elder Dragon? Well there is the Jade Sea.

Cantha

Guild Wars 1 had two additional campaigns added called Factions and Nightfall. These campaigns sat somewhere between sequels and expansions for the original campaign. They could be played without purchasing the Vanilla campaign but existing characters could unlock travel between them.

With Factions we were introduced to Cantha and the great Empire of the Dragon. Cantha was an enormous island separated from the rest of Tyria by the Unending Ocean. The Empire of the Dragon was the nation that spanned this island and ruled out of Kaineng City which covered 1/6th of the island.

It wasn't a golden age, however, for the Empire during the time of the Factions campaign. Much of the rest of the island was under rule of two different vassal states, Luxons and Kurzicks, that had declared their independence. On top of this, most of the land owned by those two vassal states was suffering the effects of the Jade Wind, a cataclysmic event that turned the Jade Sea into actual jade and petrified the surrounding forests. Unable to fish in the frozen sea or plant crops in the petrified ground, the two states fought over the jade to mine and sell.

After the events of Factions, the Empire started a campaign of purification. During this purification, the Empire exiled all non-humans from the island including races like the Tengu. The Empire did not stop there, however, and brought both the Luxons and Kurzicks back into the empire. They were not brought back as vassal states however, but instead the Luxons and Kurzicks states were abolished and the great Empire of the Dragon ruled as one massive entity. As such, Cantha became an isolated island nation consisting entirely of humans.